Vegan Pumpkin (chocolate) Oatmeal Cookies

I'm only a couple of days into this Vegan Mofo, and I I have to come clean.

1. I have eaten not one, but 2 completely NON VEGAN meals already
2. I have spent much of my mental food energy bemoaning all the delicious things I "cannot" eat this month, and eyeing people's brownies and mac and cheese with pathetic desperation

But obviously Vegan Mofo is about all the amazing things you CAN eat while sticking to a 100% plant-based diet, so I'm going to share my (so far) all-time favorite vegan baking recipe, including my gratuitous chocolate addition improvements.

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies from Vegan With a Vengeance
2 cups all purpose flour (I use whole-wheat flour, still delish)
1 1/3 cups rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cups canola oil
2 TBS molasses
1 cup canned pumpkin, or cooked pureed pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
1 TBS ground flaxseed (optional)
1 cup walnuts, finely chopped
1/2 cup raisins

I leave out the raisins b/c I never have any, and add 1 chopped up 100% Dark chocolate bar. 100% Dark chocolate is vegan, and so are some 70+ % bars, but check the labels. Some are made with milk fat. Also note that 100% Dark chocolate is suuuuuuper bitter on its own. Don't even try a nibble - you'll want to spit it out, and then feel bad for wasting even a crumb of chocolate. But mixed in with other sweet ingredients, it is quite an adequate smack of chocolateyness, complete with all those lovely anti-oxidants. Some very strict vegans do not use refined white sugar because the refining process of cane-based sugar may involve charcoal made from animal bones. I had some "raw" sugar, so I used that.

Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly grease 2 baking sheets
Mix together the flour, oats, baking soda, salt, and spices.

In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin and vanilla (and flaxseed, if using) until very well combined.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet in 3 batches, folding to combine. Fold in the walnuts and raisins (and chocolate, if using.)

chopping up the suuuuperdark chocolate bar

Drop by tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets. They don't spread very much so they can be placed only an inch apart. Flatten the tops of the cookies with a fork or your fingers to form a cookie shape. Bake for 16 minutes at 350 degrees. If you are using 2 sheets of cookies on 2 levels of your oven, rotate the sheets half way through for even baking.

Remove from the oven, cool on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. Let them cool! They taste better when they've had some time to set up.

Enjoy your vegan treat! Yay for yummy baked goods.

The Chocolate Scandal Part 2 - Make the Call!

Every once in a while, a chance to actually DO something about a social ill that puts our undies in a twist kind of falls in our laps.

I've seriously SERIOUSLY been on a chocolate mission since I read about the extensive use of child labor (which some would even call child slavery) in most commercial cocoa production. You can read my original rant here.  But besides just seeking Fair Trade chocolate for my quick fix, I didn't really do much research about how to actually advocate for change. Because I am lazy.

But today, this headline came to me from the Twittersphere:

Call Hershey Today to Fight Child Labor and Trafficking

Yes! I can do that. They even have a script all worked up for you, including responses for when you get fed the party line about the little bitty baby steps they are going to claim they are already taking to be more socially responsible. Check out the article on Change.Org - http://news.change.org/stories/call-hershey-today-to-fight-child-labor-and-trafficking

I'm at work, so I haven't actually called Hershey about this yet. But I DID sign their petition to urge Hershey to get with the program and go Fair Trade. And I included a strongly worded personal message in the petition text. And may have mentioned that I have a blog, and that I'm not afraid to use it...

Anyways, if it hurts your heart to know that your s'mores or mini Snickers or Special Dark with almonds was produced by exploited, desperate little kids, at least take 5 seconds and sign the petition. Make a call.

Do it. And tell your friends.

The Chocolate Scandal, Part 1

Oh, isn't ignorance bliss? Wasn't it so nice to dip my hand into a bag of Hershey Chocolate Eggs and munch happily; the soft and growing expanse of my tush the only worry I had to dash aside?

But now I know. And, to paraphrase Oprah, now that I know, I can't pretend that I do not and go on living my life as usual.

I have started reading a book called "Everyday Justice", which will get its own book review shortly. My dear and wise friend Liz gave me the book this last weekend, and when I opened it, I was surprised to see that a book about living justly had devoted an entire chapter to chocolate. Somehow, the fact that an estimated 200,000+ child laborers (many of them modern-day slaves) are cranking out the cocoa used in my peanut butter cups, chocolate syrup, and fancy dark nibs had completely escaped my knowledge.

Maybe all of you already knew that. But I didn't.  I read the Chocolate chapter with rage and sadness. Sure, I had seen the "Organic!" and "Fair Trade!" chocolate bars in Whole Foods, but when I need a quick choco-fix, I usually reach for the low-brow options and old favorites.

But now I know. And that means I have to start making some changes.  Here's some more info about child labor in cocoa production.  Fortune on CNN did a piece as well about the economics of the chocolate trade. Google "Chocolate and Slavery" and you can watch videos, read articles, and see photos. If you don't need that incentive to re-think your sweets, here are some resources to find Slavery Free chocolate...
(Seriously, I can't believe I even just typed that sentence. The idea that there is a designation between "Slavery Free" and, I don't know, Slavery-full chocolate in 2011 just Boggles. My. Mind.)

Slave-Free Chocolate webpage
Equal Exchange
Serrv.org

And, supposedly, Cadbury vowed to go all fair-trade in 2009, but I believe they were recently bought by another company, so I'm going to have to do some more research on that...

In the mean time, I was jubilant to discover that our little divey-looking-but-awesome Morse Market carries Equal Exchange cocoa, which I bought to mix into my coffee at work rather than my usual Nestle stuff:

It cost more than twice what a box of chemically regular hot cocoa mix packets cost, but that actually made me happy. If workers are getting paid fairly for their work, I'm happy to pay more for my chocolate. So happy in fact, that I may have also bought an Equal Exchange dark chocolate bar to taste-test.  But, um, I didn't get a picture of that...

Anyway, when you start down the rabbit trail of trying to make earth-friendlier choices, you are going to discover some things you may wish you didn't know. The Earth and the people who live on it are pretty closely tied. And shouldn't we care at least as much about the people as we do about the planet?

We are so removed from the way the whole world suffers for thoughtless consumption. I know I can't and won't do everything I could do to live justly. But I have to start somewhere, and I have to try. I'm not going to give you a lecture about the slaves that produced your kid's birthday cake frosting (please don't stop inviting me to things!). But I can make some changes. And if chocolate starts costing me more, maybe I'll buy less. Which would be good for my tush as well.